Prosfic - Not in the Bush Now by Slantedlight
So unfair - two and a half hours just went by whoosh when I'd finished work and could write as much as I wanted... How did it get to be 1.30am already? (Hmmn -okay, 2am!) But it worked! I got my work done today, and I wrote some Pros as well, and it might not be great Pros, but it's the lads. Yeay. *g* So very nice to be working in this virtual office today, people popping in and out - I might have to open my door tomorrow too... *vbg*
Not in the Bush Now
by Slantedlight
The speaker droned on, as only speakers on a stage can. Bodie had heard it all before, dozens of times - it felt like hundreds of times - and he let his gaze wander, keeping half an ear out for a change of subject. How the hell else were you going to enter a building full of armed men who wanted nothing better than to shoot you, anyway? What he really wondered was how many of the blokes around him didn’t have a clue about it, because if he was partnered with any of them when Cowley made his selections, it would only be a matter of time before he had to cut them loose.
There - that tall drink of water he’d spotted on the way in, he was actually taking notes. And the bloke with the birds-nest hair, he was paying such close attention it was a wonder he hadn’t wandered up to the stage to sit beside the boring bloody ponce. He was almost in profile to Bodie, his eyes unwaveringly on the speaker, actually concentrating. Not that you had to be Brains to work out he’d never been in the army - what was he supposed to be, anyway? Anson’d heard rumours they were being assigned some kind of social worker trick cyclist to sob their hearts out to after killing other killers, and this bloke looked the type - it could be him.
The speaker flicked a switch, and the film behind him started running again, a brief countdown of targets, and then a scenario played out by agents - he could see Crane up there, and Barry Martin - somewhere in the heart of London. Bit more interesting that, Bodie’d not had to dodge the civilised citizens of England before. The dodgier parts of Belfast, alright, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Crane himself came up to speak next, managing to hold Bodie’s attention for the last twenty minutes before lunch, and then they were dismissed and out the door for an hour’s break. Bodie found himself in a rag-tag crowd heading across the road, around the corner, and towards The Nag’s Head, the first pub someone remembered with a blackboard outside advertising pie and mash. He jostled along good humouredly, taking deep breaths of the fresh air - relative to what he’d been breathing in from a roomful of blokes all morning at least. And oddly enough a scattering of women. Secretaries, he’d thought, taking notes for them, until he’d seen the stretch of a holster under that blonde bird’s jacket. Now maybe he’d get to spar with her…
“Oi-oi!”
Bodie turned his head just in time to see Birds-nest ducking through a pack of small boys who’d been playing football on the street, pinching their ball with ease, and dodging and diving around them, grinning at their banshee wails and roars of outrage. He was nippy, Bodie’d give him that, all speed and legs and grace, twisting this way and that… He found himself watching out for the moments his jacket pulled high above his backside, over a t-shirt tucked into tight denim, over obviously tight muscle, and blinked, disconcerted.
“Right - who’s round then?” some wag called as they got to the door of the pub, and Birds-nest finally relinquished the ball, face alive with… something. Something that made Bodie think maybe he wasn’t a social worker after all. They both joined in the chorus - “Yours!” - and when Birds-nest caught his eye, still smiling, he smiled back.
They ended up at the same table, plates swimming with gravy and pints of lager half drunk before they’d even sat down.
“Ray Doyle,” Birds-nest said, and Bodie blinked. He’d heard that name bandied around as the bloke to beat, and with more than one scowl and promise of vengeance.
“Bodie.”
Doyle raised an eyebrow at him, Bodie gave him a smirk, took another mouthful from his pint and said nothing. He plunged his fork into golden pastry and it crumbled, stuck on a chunk of beef.
“So, what are you - army?”
Bodie paused, fork halfway to his mouth. There was something about the way the little toerag had said that… “SAS. You?”
“Cough up, Doyle!”
That was Larkin at the other end of the table, and Bodie looked over, eyed him until he looked away, and then looked back at Doyle.
“I lost,” Doyle explained, and there was an oh-so-amused glint in his eyes that Bodie suddenly wanted to poke out with the dirty end of his cutlery. “You look more like regular army to me.”
“And how’s that then?” Bodie kept his voice low, and any of his old mob would have known to take a step back.
“Oh, you know…” That glint was still there. Yeah, Bodie knew alright.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, taking another careful stab at his pie, looking Doyle straight in the eye as he lifted it to his mouth, and bit it solidly from his fork. He swiped at a drip of gravy with his tongue, didn’t take his eyes off Doyle.
Doyle had followed his movement, and he bit his lip for moment, swallowed, but he held Bodie’s gaze.
“Met.”
“A woodentop!” He couldn’t help that, gleeful at the taunt, years of conditioning kicking back in. He’d known there’d be police in the intake - or at least Cowley’s spiel had suggested there would be - but he hadn’t thought any of them would last through the first trials to acceptance and then out the other side to be here now. He liked the way that glint vanished though, was replaced by something harder, more still. Oh yeah, that was what to do with this one, keep him off-balance. “A trompety-plod woodentop?”
“That’s right,” Doyle said, almost sounding easy, all sharp steel underneath. On his other side King had sat back slightly, and Bodie was aware of a hush around the table. “The ones who do all the dirty work before the glory boys decide to come crashing in.”
He was confident for a bugger surrounded by glory boys.
“That’s right,” Bodie mocked. “Someone’s gotta clean up the mess you lot can’t handle.” He scooped up some mash, dipping it in the gravy, and let his own lips quirk up at the corners before he ate, let the light of battle into his own eyes.
“I could handle you without…”
“Another pint, Bodie?” Anson interrupted smoothly from his other side. “I reckon it might be your round.”
“You must be joking!” He turned his amused gaze on the man, content to dismiss Doyle - and for Doyle to know that he’d done it. “I’ve not seen you buy one yet.”
“I don’t have to…”
“Pay up, pay up, and play the game!” he chanted, reached out and gave him a shove, feeling Doyle’s eyes hot on him as he did it.
By the time Anson had been persuaded that if he didn’t go to the bar now, they’d never manage another drink before the afternoon session, Doyle had been distracted by King, and Bodie could finish his lunch in relatively cheerful peace. Who did he think he was, anyway? Hot stuff on his own level maybe, but nothing on the people who did the real work out there.
It lasted all the way back to the rooms at CI5 hq, the high of the fresh air, and sparring with the woodentop, where they were met again by the handwritten signs to remind them they were attending the Induction Conference, tea urns steaming in front of rows of white china cups and saucers that looked incongruous in almost every hand in that room. He queued for a cup anyway, served for him by an old bloke introduced only as Charlie, and strode reluctantly back to a seat, the pall of the hours still to come settling back over him. And they were on again tomorrow. Conference? Fancy way of saying sit down, shut up, and listen to me all day, he thought gloomily.
He found himself in the row behind Doyle again - Birds-nest. How the hell had he got away with that hair as a copper? It was way too long - too easy for someone to grab him by it, pull his head back to bare that throat, hold him down and…
It was Cowley himself who limped onto the stage next - George Cowley the great - the Cow he’d heard him called casually the other day, by a couple of the older agents. He was certainly bellowing away this afternoon, something about how he’d founded CI5, and… history. Dust and old bones.
Doyle’s throat jumped as he swallowed, and Bodie realised he was staring at him again. Well, he was good for something, anyway, easy enough on the eye. He’d taken his jacket off in the fug of the room, which meant Bodie could trace the tense line of his muscles under the almost indecently thin t-shirt he was wearing. The seat and the back of the chair framed his backside nicely, especially in those jeans, and Bodie let himself look again at where Doyle’s t-shirt vanished into them, at the line of a gap where he could just slide a hand if he wanted to, jeans tight enough to make it difficult, and to hold him in place once he’d done it… Shame that nice arse was the arse end of a bloody plod.
Cowley was winding himself up by the sound of it. “…anarchy, acts of terror, crimes against the public. To combat it I've got special men - experts from the army, the police, from every service…”
“Experts from the police? Isn’t that an oxymoron?” he muttered to the bloke beside him, and was rewarded with a satisfying snort of laughter. When Bodie lifted his head, Doyle had twisted around in his seat, was glaring at him. Good hearing too, then. Bodie let that smirk twist onto his lips again, the one that had always driven people…
There was a crash of wood against the floor, and a surprised yell from someone, and then Doyle was on him, and they were off, a tangle of muscle against muscle and fists and feet, space clearing around them, the men delighted to be released from the tedium of the conference, circling them automatically, ready to be entertained.
“Army thug!” Doyle spat out above him, where he’d managed to get the upper hand, gripping Bodie’s wrists in a surprisingly strong grip, thumbs digging into soft flesh, straddling Bodie’s stomach, and sliding himself back to try and secure Bodie’s legs, stop him getting purchase.
Bodie’d been hard, he realised now, since he’d first laid eyes on the bastard, and when he thrust upwards it wasn’t entirely in an attempt to throw him off. He caught the moment that Doyle realised what had happened, the flare of lust in his eyes, even over his rage, and so Bodie did it again, and stopped resisting Doyle’s hold on his arms so that the man fell forwards, face falling towards his, lips a suddenly startled oh, mouth open. Bodie imagined what he could do to that mouth, could see for just a moment that Doyle was imagining it too, and then he reached up and grasped that birds nest hair, felt it soft and tangled around his fingers, and then he twisted and pulled, until it was Doyle on the hard floor under him, throat bared for him…
“Bodie! Doyle!”
Cowley had finally made his way through the barracking men, and somehow his shout froze them both.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing? Well?”
Bodie came back to himself slowly, found himself lying solidly across Doyle, one hand in his hair, the other tightly around Doyle’s wrists, holding them together above his head, their faces close together. He could feel Doyle’s chest heaving, breath panting past Bodie’s cheek, sudden submission, and he could feel that he was breathing just as heavily against Doyle.
“If you think that this is the way CI5 agents behave - that you’ll be allowed to behave with anything other than absolute civility in these corridors…”
What about outside the corridors? What about in the privacy of our own flats…?
And Bodie looked down, and he could see that Doyle was thinking exactly the same thing, that he was feeling Bodie hard against him, hard against his own rigid cock, and he could see that flash of hard amusement back in Doyle’s eyes too, see it playing on his lips, that were close enough to…
“…now stop making a spectacle of yourselves, and get out. You can wait outside my office until I’m ready for you.” Cowley’s voice was quieter now, but it carried from one side of the room to the other and it could have cut glass, and all around them men were slinking back to their seats.
Bodie took one more look into Doyle’s eyes, tightened his hand on the man’s wrists, his grip in Doyle’s hair, and pressed their cocks together one more time, under cover of preparing to get up, and then they were both standing, shoulder to shoulder, facing Cowley for a moment before turning to leave the room, disgraced schoolboys on their way to see the head, their own kind of escape.
“And Doyle!” Cowley’s voice rapped out again, “Make an appointment with your barber whilst you’re waiting - your hair’s a disgrace!”
Shame that, Bodie thought, knowing Doyle would do it in the same way he knew they were both going to go and wait exactly where the Cow had told them to go and wait. Still, they had time, both of them, other things to do, to discover, escapes to make. It would grow back.
February, 2015
Not in the Bush Now
by Slantedlight
The speaker droned on, as only speakers on a stage can. Bodie had heard it all before, dozens of times - it felt like hundreds of times - and he let his gaze wander, keeping half an ear out for a change of subject. How the hell else were you going to enter a building full of armed men who wanted nothing better than to shoot you, anyway? What he really wondered was how many of the blokes around him didn’t have a clue about it, because if he was partnered with any of them when Cowley made his selections, it would only be a matter of time before he had to cut them loose.
There - that tall drink of water he’d spotted on the way in, he was actually taking notes. And the bloke with the birds-nest hair, he was paying such close attention it was a wonder he hadn’t wandered up to the stage to sit beside the boring bloody ponce. He was almost in profile to Bodie, his eyes unwaveringly on the speaker, actually concentrating. Not that you had to be Brains to work out he’d never been in the army - what was he supposed to be, anyway? Anson’d heard rumours they were being assigned some kind of social worker trick cyclist to sob their hearts out to after killing other killers, and this bloke looked the type - it could be him.
The speaker flicked a switch, and the film behind him started running again, a brief countdown of targets, and then a scenario played out by agents - he could see Crane up there, and Barry Martin - somewhere in the heart of London. Bit more interesting that, Bodie’d not had to dodge the civilised citizens of England before. The dodgier parts of Belfast, alright, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Crane himself came up to speak next, managing to hold Bodie’s attention for the last twenty minutes before lunch, and then they were dismissed and out the door for an hour’s break. Bodie found himself in a rag-tag crowd heading across the road, around the corner, and towards The Nag’s Head, the first pub someone remembered with a blackboard outside advertising pie and mash. He jostled along good humouredly, taking deep breaths of the fresh air - relative to what he’d been breathing in from a roomful of blokes all morning at least. And oddly enough a scattering of women. Secretaries, he’d thought, taking notes for them, until he’d seen the stretch of a holster under that blonde bird’s jacket. Now maybe he’d get to spar with her…
“Oi-oi!”
Bodie turned his head just in time to see Birds-nest ducking through a pack of small boys who’d been playing football on the street, pinching their ball with ease, and dodging and diving around them, grinning at their banshee wails and roars of outrage. He was nippy, Bodie’d give him that, all speed and legs and grace, twisting this way and that… He found himself watching out for the moments his jacket pulled high above his backside, over a t-shirt tucked into tight denim, over obviously tight muscle, and blinked, disconcerted.
“Right - who’s round then?” some wag called as they got to the door of the pub, and Birds-nest finally relinquished the ball, face alive with… something. Something that made Bodie think maybe he wasn’t a social worker after all. They both joined in the chorus - “Yours!” - and when Birds-nest caught his eye, still smiling, he smiled back.
They ended up at the same table, plates swimming with gravy and pints of lager half drunk before they’d even sat down.
“Ray Doyle,” Birds-nest said, and Bodie blinked. He’d heard that name bandied around as the bloke to beat, and with more than one scowl and promise of vengeance.
“Bodie.”
Doyle raised an eyebrow at him, Bodie gave him a smirk, took another mouthful from his pint and said nothing. He plunged his fork into golden pastry and it crumbled, stuck on a chunk of beef.
“So, what are you - army?”
Bodie paused, fork halfway to his mouth. There was something about the way the little toerag had said that… “SAS. You?”
“Cough up, Doyle!”
That was Larkin at the other end of the table, and Bodie looked over, eyed him until he looked away, and then looked back at Doyle.
“I lost,” Doyle explained, and there was an oh-so-amused glint in his eyes that Bodie suddenly wanted to poke out with the dirty end of his cutlery. “You look more like regular army to me.”
“And how’s that then?” Bodie kept his voice low, and any of his old mob would have known to take a step back.
“Oh, you know…” That glint was still there. Yeah, Bodie knew alright.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, taking another careful stab at his pie, looking Doyle straight in the eye as he lifted it to his mouth, and bit it solidly from his fork. He swiped at a drip of gravy with his tongue, didn’t take his eyes off Doyle.
Doyle had followed his movement, and he bit his lip for moment, swallowed, but he held Bodie’s gaze.
“Met.”
“A woodentop!” He couldn’t help that, gleeful at the taunt, years of conditioning kicking back in. He’d known there’d be police in the intake - or at least Cowley’s spiel had suggested there would be - but he hadn’t thought any of them would last through the first trials to acceptance and then out the other side to be here now. He liked the way that glint vanished though, was replaced by something harder, more still. Oh yeah, that was what to do with this one, keep him off-balance. “A trompety-plod woodentop?”
“That’s right,” Doyle said, almost sounding easy, all sharp steel underneath. On his other side King had sat back slightly, and Bodie was aware of a hush around the table. “The ones who do all the dirty work before the glory boys decide to come crashing in.”
He was confident for a bugger surrounded by glory boys.
“That’s right,” Bodie mocked. “Someone’s gotta clean up the mess you lot can’t handle.” He scooped up some mash, dipping it in the gravy, and let his own lips quirk up at the corners before he ate, let the light of battle into his own eyes.
“I could handle you without…”
“Another pint, Bodie?” Anson interrupted smoothly from his other side. “I reckon it might be your round.”
“You must be joking!” He turned his amused gaze on the man, content to dismiss Doyle - and for Doyle to know that he’d done it. “I’ve not seen you buy one yet.”
“I don’t have to…”
“Pay up, pay up, and play the game!” he chanted, reached out and gave him a shove, feeling Doyle’s eyes hot on him as he did it.
By the time Anson had been persuaded that if he didn’t go to the bar now, they’d never manage another drink before the afternoon session, Doyle had been distracted by King, and Bodie could finish his lunch in relatively cheerful peace. Who did he think he was, anyway? Hot stuff on his own level maybe, but nothing on the people who did the real work out there.
It lasted all the way back to the rooms at CI5 hq, the high of the fresh air, and sparring with the woodentop, where they were met again by the handwritten signs to remind them they were attending the Induction Conference, tea urns steaming in front of rows of white china cups and saucers that looked incongruous in almost every hand in that room. He queued for a cup anyway, served for him by an old bloke introduced only as Charlie, and strode reluctantly back to a seat, the pall of the hours still to come settling back over him. And they were on again tomorrow. Conference? Fancy way of saying sit down, shut up, and listen to me all day, he thought gloomily.
He found himself in the row behind Doyle again - Birds-nest. How the hell had he got away with that hair as a copper? It was way too long - too easy for someone to grab him by it, pull his head back to bare that throat, hold him down and…
It was Cowley himself who limped onto the stage next - George Cowley the great - the Cow he’d heard him called casually the other day, by a couple of the older agents. He was certainly bellowing away this afternoon, something about how he’d founded CI5, and… history. Dust and old bones.
Doyle’s throat jumped as he swallowed, and Bodie realised he was staring at him again. Well, he was good for something, anyway, easy enough on the eye. He’d taken his jacket off in the fug of the room, which meant Bodie could trace the tense line of his muscles under the almost indecently thin t-shirt he was wearing. The seat and the back of the chair framed his backside nicely, especially in those jeans, and Bodie let himself look again at where Doyle’s t-shirt vanished into them, at the line of a gap where he could just slide a hand if he wanted to, jeans tight enough to make it difficult, and to hold him in place once he’d done it… Shame that nice arse was the arse end of a bloody plod.
Cowley was winding himself up by the sound of it. “…anarchy, acts of terror, crimes against the public. To combat it I've got special men - experts from the army, the police, from every service…”
“Experts from the police? Isn’t that an oxymoron?” he muttered to the bloke beside him, and was rewarded with a satisfying snort of laughter. When Bodie lifted his head, Doyle had twisted around in his seat, was glaring at him. Good hearing too, then. Bodie let that smirk twist onto his lips again, the one that had always driven people…
There was a crash of wood against the floor, and a surprised yell from someone, and then Doyle was on him, and they were off, a tangle of muscle against muscle and fists and feet, space clearing around them, the men delighted to be released from the tedium of the conference, circling them automatically, ready to be entertained.
“Army thug!” Doyle spat out above him, where he’d managed to get the upper hand, gripping Bodie’s wrists in a surprisingly strong grip, thumbs digging into soft flesh, straddling Bodie’s stomach, and sliding himself back to try and secure Bodie’s legs, stop him getting purchase.
Bodie’d been hard, he realised now, since he’d first laid eyes on the bastard, and when he thrust upwards it wasn’t entirely in an attempt to throw him off. He caught the moment that Doyle realised what had happened, the flare of lust in his eyes, even over his rage, and so Bodie did it again, and stopped resisting Doyle’s hold on his arms so that the man fell forwards, face falling towards his, lips a suddenly startled oh, mouth open. Bodie imagined what he could do to that mouth, could see for just a moment that Doyle was imagining it too, and then he reached up and grasped that birds nest hair, felt it soft and tangled around his fingers, and then he twisted and pulled, until it was Doyle on the hard floor under him, throat bared for him…
“Bodie! Doyle!”
Cowley had finally made his way through the barracking men, and somehow his shout froze them both.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing? Well?”
Bodie came back to himself slowly, found himself lying solidly across Doyle, one hand in his hair, the other tightly around Doyle’s wrists, holding them together above his head, their faces close together. He could feel Doyle’s chest heaving, breath panting past Bodie’s cheek, sudden submission, and he could feel that he was breathing just as heavily against Doyle.
“If you think that this is the way CI5 agents behave - that you’ll be allowed to behave with anything other than absolute civility in these corridors…”
What about outside the corridors? What about in the privacy of our own flats…?
And Bodie looked down, and he could see that Doyle was thinking exactly the same thing, that he was feeling Bodie hard against him, hard against his own rigid cock, and he could see that flash of hard amusement back in Doyle’s eyes too, see it playing on his lips, that were close enough to…
“…now stop making a spectacle of yourselves, and get out. You can wait outside my office until I’m ready for you.” Cowley’s voice was quieter now, but it carried from one side of the room to the other and it could have cut glass, and all around them men were slinking back to their seats.
Bodie took one more look into Doyle’s eyes, tightened his hand on the man’s wrists, his grip in Doyle’s hair, and pressed their cocks together one more time, under cover of preparing to get up, and then they were both standing, shoulder to shoulder, facing Cowley for a moment before turning to leave the room, disgraced schoolboys on their way to see the head, their own kind of escape.
“And Doyle!” Cowley’s voice rapped out again, “Make an appointment with your barber whilst you’re waiting - your hair’s a disgrace!”
Shame that, Bodie thought, knowing Doyle would do it in the same way he knew they were both going to go and wait exactly where the Cow had told them to go and wait. Still, they had time, both of them, other things to do, to discover, escapes to make. It would grow back.
February, 2015